“Seventeen,” the boy answered grimly.
“Yes, you’re seventeen. And at the wild, foolish age of seventeen you’re starting out to ruin your life precisely as I started out to ruin mine. And did! Only I started at twenty-one instead of bally seventeen.”
“Ruining my life? How am I ruining my life, by writing poetry?”
“No! By going contrary to your father’s best judgment for your welfare and future. By trying to do something and be something which your father doesn’t approve of. At twenty-one I was in the same position toward my father—I admit it! My father knew what was best for me; he was older and therefore wiser. He wanted me to be a business man—to set up a shop with him. But I had hazy, half-baked ideas that I wanted to be a minister. So I went contrary to my father’s advice and his wiser judgment.”
“You regretted wanting to be a minister?”
“No! I’ve regretted I presumed to know more than my father about what I was best fitted to do. And now my own boy has come along and stands exactly on the brink of the same horrible precipice. I’d have thanked my father if he’d broken my neck for my independence. I’m not going to do that to you. But I want to show you the hideous mistake you’re making. Nathaniel, I want to save you from frittering away your life being any such puerile, willy-nilly thing as a poet!”
“But I like being a writer! I could do something big!”
“Stop! I’m doing the talking! You like to write poems, yes. And some men like to drink whisky and smoke cigarettes. But this isn’t a world in which we can pamper ourselves in the things we like to do. It’s a world in which we’ve got to school ourselves in stiff self-discipline—do the things we don’t like to do. Always! The moment a boy or a man goes doing something he likes to do, he’s guilty of a weakness—of a sin!—and sin is displeasing in the sight of the Heavenly Father. The Bible says so!”
“But if I can’t write, what do you want I should do?”
“The Bible says, ‘By the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread,’ Genesis, third chapter, nineteenth verse. That means a man’s chief concern in this world is work, business. All other things come second to work, business. A man should first of all have a trade, succeed in a good business, make money. After he’s done these things, then perhaps he can waste a little time with foolishness like poetry. But to put the poetry nonsense first,—that’s the cart before the horse; that’s to court failure, poverty, all the hardships I’ve had to endure, wanting to be a minister before I knew my own mind—marrying your mother! And I’ve decided I don’t intend to see you do it. As you’re not old enough to make up your own mind yet, it’s my duty to make it up for you. But I want you to see why and how it’s done. Twenty years from to-night, on your bended knees, with tears in your eyes, you’ll kiss my hand and thank me—just as you’re going to thank me some day for keeping you from girls or setting you to work in the tannery—having that valuable experience in contacting with unpleasant things.”